Monday, October 13, 2008

3 Countries Combine Forces to Investigate Trafficking of Women

India Singapore and Malaysia are all investigating a sex slave trafficking circuit.

Slavery is one of the many social ills caused by poverty. Women from North East India are lured to the big cities with the promise of good jobs. Instead the women are forced to be strippers or prostitutes.

The probe comes in the wake of an incident in which five tribal girls from Manipur and Assam, who were taken by an agent to Singapore on the pretext of getting them jobs there, were sent to Malaysia and pushed into flesh trade.

One of the girls managed to escape and alerted a pastor who got help from an NGO.

All the five were housed in the David Pasteur Christian Home for destitutes here, which linked up with social activist Kinderson Panmei.

Minister for Overseas Affairs Vyalar Ravi, currently on an official visit here, has said that his ministry has decided to immediately crack down on dubious recruitment agents and as a first step would suspend the agency on the receipt of any report against them and then start an enquiry against them.

He said his ministry had helped in the repatriation of the women back home last Friday.

One of the agents involved in the incident has been arrested in Manipur in India while one is on the run in Kolkata. Ravi has said that there were plans to amend the existing Immigration Act and recruitment agents duping people would be sentenced to a minimum of five years imprisonment. Manipur police are believed to have made several arrests in connection with the case of agents luring girls to this region, local media reports said.

Singapore and Malaysian police are believed to be hot on the trail of another man, believed to be the mastermind of a Singapore-based "recruiting firm", New Straits Times reported on Monday.